Family Medicine / Direct Primary Care / Walk-Ins

Recently, I received tragic news. One of my high school classmates in the prime of his life had died suddenly of a heart attack. He was an outgoing, charismatic father, a Mississippi Highway Patrolman and an all-around likeable guy living and enjoying life to the fullest. He had no prior history of heart disease. And just like that in a blink of an eye, he was gone.

Have you ever considered the origins of the "15-minute office visit" and how we arrived at it as the benchmark for a health care visit?

In my earlier days as a primary care doctor working in a traditional medical clinic, I recall receiving a productivity report every month. This report ranked every doctor in the group by the volume of patients seen, the total fees charged, and most importantly, patients seen per hour.

I once knew a fellow who was fond of saying, "Two is one and one is none." Basically, he was saying that you should always have a backup. In this world where we are increasingly dependent on computers, databases, networks, and wireless communication, it becomes even more of an imperative.

Like most people, my beginnings were humble. As a young child, I remembered our small home next to a canal in deep south Florida where my mother and fraternal twin brother resided. My earliest, fondest memories were of visiting my grandparents and walking to my elementary school just a few blocks away with friends. Then in 1978, things suddenly changed. My mother was remarrying, so we were loading everything up in a U-Haul truck for a 2 day trip to our new hometown, Carthage, Mississippi, where I would grow up for the next 11 years. It was in this sleepy central Mississippi town where I decided I wanted to be a family doctor, having been inspired by its highly regarded local family physicians, Dr. Frank Bowen, Dr. Loutrelle Stribling, and Dr. Jack Scott.

Some of you may be familiar with the term fractional reserve banking. It describes the structure of virtually all banks in existence today. Laws require that your bank keep about a tenth of deposits on reserve while loaning out the rest. Obviously, if all bank account holders show up at one time to demand their money, the bank cannot cover the demands. This is called a bank run, which was famously depicted in the Jimmy Stewart movie It's a Wonderful Life. I would like to coin a new term to describe our current Healthcare System: Fractional Reserve Medicine.

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Recently, I received tragic news. One of my high school classmates in the prime of his life had died suddenly of a heart attack. He was an outgoing, charismatic father, a Mississippi Highway Patrolman and an all-around likeable guy living and enjoying life to the fullest. He had no prior history of heart disease. And just like that in a blink of an eye, he was gone.

Have you ever considered the origins of the "15-minute office visit" and how we arrived at it as the benchmark for a health care visit?
In my earlier days as a primary care doctor working in a traditional medical clinic, I recall receiving a productivity report every month. This report ranked every doctor in the group by the volume of patients seen, the total fees charged, and most importantly, patients seen per hour.

I once knew a fellow who was fond of saying, "Two is one and one is none." Basically, he was saying that you should always have a backup. In this world where we are increasingly dependent on computers, databases, networks, and wireless communication, it becomes even more of an imperative.

Like most people, my beginnings were humble. As a young child, I remembered our small home next to a canal in deep south Florida where my mother and fraternal twin brother resided. My earliest, fondest memories were of visiting my grandparents and walking to my elementary school just a few blocks away with friends. Then in 1978, things suddenly changed. My mother was remarrying, so we were loading everything up in a U-Haul truck for a 2 day trip to our new hometown, Carthage, Mississippi, where I would grow up for the next 11 years. It was in this sleepy central Mississippi town where I decided I wanted to be a family doctor, having been inspired by its highly regarded local family physicians, Dr. Frank Bowen, Dr. Loutrelle Stribling, and Dr. Jack Scott.

Some of you may be familiar with the term fractional reserve banking. It describes the structure of virtually all banks in existence today. Laws require that your bank keep about a tenth of deposits on reserve while loaning out the rest. Obviously, if all bank account holders show up at one time to demand their money, the bank cannot cover the demands. This is called a bank run, which was famously depicted in the Jimmy Stewart movie It's a Wonderful Life. I would like to coin a new term to describe our current Healthcare System: Fractional Reserve Medicine.